Oxfam India Held Youth Festivals In Lucknow And Raipur

The youth festival held by Oxfam India in Lucknow and Raipur aimed to engage with youth group and civil societies on the issue on domestic violence. The focus areas were to sensitization and spread awareness among the youth regarding change in social norms in the society and advocacy.

Lucknow: Youth Festival

10 February, 2017

Youth festival started with great enthusiasm in Snageet Natya academy Gomtinagar Lucknow with the collaboration of Oxfam India Lucknow and Dastak Manch on 10th February 2016. More than 700 students, youth group participated in this three days festival in various programmes. The theme of this year festival was “Role of Youth towards Social Change and on Gender Equality”

Ms. Farukh Jaffar , a senior theatre artist who also worked in the film Peepli Live as a supporting actress and also Nominated for Apsara Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Female) , inaugurated the event. She wrote her message in Urdu and addressed the youth. She motivated the youth to challenge stereotypes thoughts, behaviour and attitude of the society for social changes and gender equality. She shared her experience that it was very difficult to her to join theatre around 30 years back. Being a woman she faced many challenges and difficulties in the family as well as in the society, however now she feels proud and satisfaction when she gets respect and love from public.

The series of activities like poetry, debate, street theatre, poster making, and panel discussion was held to develop perspective among the participants regarding the gender and caste based violence, inequality and injustice.

A film, “Red dresses and black roses” based on story of acid attack survivors who confronts the violence committed against them by writing letters to their attackers was showed in the concluding session followed by a panel discussion with Alok Dixshit (runs campaign against acid attack and also married with Laxmi , an acid attack victim), Roopa (an acid attack survivor and one of the artist of film) and Ms Heena Desai , feminist and social activist.

Raipur- Youth Festival

25 February, 2017

The youth fair called ‘Just Gender- Youth Mela’ was organised with the collaboration of Women’ Study Centre (Pt. Ravishankar University, Raipur) and State Resource Centre (Adult & Continuing Education) Raipur in the campus of the Pt. Ravishankar University, Raipur on 25 February 2017. A program of this kind is being organized for the first time in Chhattisgarh.

‘Just Gender’, was truly the day of the Youth. Every department had two gender champions – a male and a female. These gender champions were trained to organising the fair, they took the responsibility of various booths and through interactive games and activities, they discussed on a variety of issues of gender inequalities. These booths were ‘Mitwa’ (Life Partner in Chhattisgarh dialect), for boys and for girls, Snake & Ladders for boys and for girls, Stop eve teasing (for boys), Roadside Romeo for girls, One minute game for boys and for girls, Secret of beautification for girls, Race for equality, Sex –determination. There was a booth where short-films and documentaries were shown.

They collectively spoke about gender equality and how deep-rooted patriarchal mindsets and discriminatory social norms results in the violation of human rights of girls and women in the private as well as personal spaces, viz oppression, molestation, dowry, child marriage, domestic violence, paedophilia, harassment at working places, etc. They questioned the violations; “Do these incidents hurt us? Disturb us? Or make us aware? Or do we remain only inert spectator? How much we, and our society, is alert, awake and take action in this regard? It is to be noted that these affect men and boy as well, it overburdens them due normative notions and myths around masculinities.”

The youth fair talked about the importance of the youth being the agents of change agents and a harbinger of social awareness in order to end the gender-based inequality and discriminations.

The participants in both the youth fairs thoroughly enjoyed the fair and engaged in games and discussions. Excitement, enjoyment, heated discussions, light selfie moments and food for thought were the centre of the fairs.

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